...Critical and Creative Thinking Questions II Resource: Visualizing Psychology Read questions 1-6 located in Critical and Creative Thinking Questions in Ch. 15 of Visualizing Psychology. Answer each question in at least 75 words Critical and Creative Thinking Questions for Chapter 15 - Social Psychology 1 | Have you ever changed a strongly held attitude? What caused the change for you?I used to hate research writing in high school . I got not so desirable grades on most of them because I wasn't really sure how to do them , plus I wasn't playing attention when the steps where being explained. So in return submitted awful reports . The problem was I didn't make an outline nor was I even sure what I wanted to write about , I just wanted to write something , and a lot of time I would run out of ideas .Nevertheless , I learned to love research through the encouragements I received from several tutors and my 12th grade English teacher . By change my attitude about writing , I was able to increase my quality sources that made a previously difficult assignment into worry free tasks . | | | 2 | Do you believe that you are free of prejudice? After reading this chapter, which of the many factors that cause prejudice do you think is most important to change? No I don't believe I am free from prejudice. Prejudice is an adverse judgment or opinion formed beforehand or without knowledge or examination of the facts. Prejudice can come from ignorance and also fear...
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...Summary ‘Torture and public policy’ said about story of brutal torture which arouse in Abu Ghraib. Brutal torture was outcome of chain of actions. Although upper officer did not intend make it occur. This is chronological order which bring about brutal torture. 1. President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld decided, against the advice of some professional military officers, to limi the number of troops sen to Iraq. 2. President Bush decided that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to al Qaeda. 3. Assistant Attorney General Bybee defined torture narrowly and argued that the commander-in-chief power negated the law against torture. 4. Secretary Rumsfeld expanded the range of permissible interrogation tactics. 5. Rumsfeld decided that military intelligence would control Guantanamo. 6. Stephen Cambone sent General Miller to change interrogation policy at Abu Ghraib. 7. General Karpinski did not ensure that her MP troops were well trained or supplied. 8. General Sanchez expanded the range of interrogation techniques allowed at Abu Ghraib. 9. Colonel Pappas ran Abu Ghraib with an emphasis on extracting actionable intelligence. 10. Members of the 205 Military intelligence directed MPs to “set the conditions” for interrogations. 11. Members of the 372nd Military Police Company committed the abusive acts that were photographed. | Review...
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... A riot broke out on day two. One prisoner developed a psychosomatic rash all over his body upon finding out that his "parole" had been turned down. After only 6 days (of a planned two weeks), the experiment was shut down, for fear that one of the prisoners would be seriously hurt. Although the intent of the experiment was to examine captivity, its result has been used to demonstrate the impressionability and obedience of people when provided with a legitimizing ideology and social and institutional support. It is also used to illustrate cognitive dissonance theory and the power of seniority/authority. How do findings from this study help you explain the torture of prisoners in Iraq? The human rights abuses that occurred at the Abu Ghraib prison under the authority of the American armed forces in the aftermath of the 2003 Iraq war may be a recent example of what happened in the experiment in real life. Soldiers were...
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...Abu Ghraib During the war in Iraq that began in March 2003, personnel of the United States Army and the Central Intelligence Agency committed a series of human rights violations against detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. These violations included physical and sexual abuse, torture, rape, sodomy, and murder. The abuses came to light with reports published in late 2003 by Amnesty International and the Associated Press. The incidents received widespread condemnation both within the United States and abroad, although the soldiers received support from some conservative media within the US. The administration of George W. Bush attempted to portray the abuses as isolated incidents, not indicative of general US policy. This was contradicted by humanitarian organizations such as the Red Cross, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch, stated after multiple investigations that the abuses at Abu Ghraib were not isolated but were part of a wider pattern of torture and brutal treatment at American overseas detention centers, including those in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay. There was evidence that authorization for the torture had come from high up in the military hierarchy, with allegations being made that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had authorized some of the actions. The United States Department of Defense removed seventeen soldiers and officers from duty, and eleven soldiers were charged with dereliction of duty, maltreatment, aggravated assault...
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...were chosen because they were bigger than those who were made prisoners, but actually, there was no difference in the average height of the two groups. What do you think caused this misperception? 6. Compare the reactions of these visitors to the reactions of civilians in encounters with the police or other authorities. How typical was their behavior? 7. In an exploratory study such as this, one problem is defining what the "data" are -- the information we should collect. Also, what should have been done to minimize the effects of experimenter bias on the outcome of the study? What were the dangers of the principal investigator assuming the role of prison superintendent? 8. In 2003 U.S. soldiers abused Iraqi prisoners held at Abu Ghraib, 20 miles west of Baghdad. The prisoners were stripped, made to wear bags over their heads, and sexually humiliated while the guards laughed and took photographs. How is this abuse similar to or different from what took place in the Stanford Prison Experiment? 9. Where had our "John Wayne" learned to become such a guard? How could he and others move so readily into that role? How could intelligent, mentally healthy,...
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...Values and Ethics at Abu Ghraib Would you be able to stand up against your superiors, coworkers and friends to uphold your values and ethics? Or would you be like the many soldiers guarding Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq who lost their careers as a result of their poor ethical decisions? The Abu Ghraib prison scandal put many people’s values and ethics to the test. The outcome, career success was influenced by values and ethics displayed through the choices of those involved. The chain of command was not prosecuted, but the soldier who attempted to bring the situation to the attention of his superiors was ostracized and threatened by his friends and coworkers. So how did this situation come to be, who is to blame, and were the punishments of all involved justified? Located approximately 20 kilometers west of Baghdad, Abu Ghraib was the largest and most notorious prison in Iraq (CBS, 2007). It covers 280 acres, has a perimeter of about two and a half miles and is made up of five individual compounds, each possessing guard towers and very high walls. Under Saddam Hussein’s rule, countless numbers of Iraqis were tortured and executed in Abu Ghraib. After the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, the prison at Abu Ghraib was stripped of doors, windows, and bricks by looters. Within months, coalition forces mended and cleaned the prison compound. They added toilets, showers, and even a medical center. However, the living conditions at Abu Ghraib continued to suffer. Detainment cells...
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...A World Apart Jackie Wolfe September 25, 2010 In the world there are several countries who conduct their correctional systems the same as the United States and then there are some who do just the opposite. The American correctional system is designed to incarcerate and try to rehabilitate offenders, if possible. I chose to compare the American correctional system with that of the Iraqi correctional systems. This paper will show the differences in the two. It will also show how the American correctional system is run in comparison to that of the Iraqi correctional system. The American correctional system is set up with different types of prisons. Most prisons are run by the state government although the United States does have federal prisons. The federal prisons are run by the federal government. In the United States, prisons are operated at various levels of security, ranging from minimum-security prisons that mainly house non-violent offenders to Supermax facilities that house well-known criminals and terrorists (DeMaille, 2007). In the United States, prisons house more than two million prisoners. The majority of criminals in the prison system are because of drugs and violent crimes. As of the end of August 2010, there were approximately 210,000 prisoners in federal prisons with about half of those for drug related crimes (BOP, 2010). In the United States there are two well-known federal penitentiaries. They are Alcatraz, which is closed...
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...This paper will examine the ethical implications on psychological research of the Stanford Prison Experiment conducted at Stanford University in 1971. Ethics will be defined and the concept of risk/benefit ratio will be discussed. The Stanford Prison Experiment will be described. Finally, the impact of the Stanford Prison Experiment on psychological research will be evaluated. Ethics Defined Ethics is concerned with the principles of right conduct. In the philosophical use, ethics is a branch of philosophy that is concerned with the study of morals and how it is that moral decisions are made. Ethics also has a stricter use when dealing with the rules or standards that govern conduct and right behavior (The American Heritage Dictionary, 2000). Risk/Benefit Ratio Ethical approaches to research take into account the risk/benefit ratio. This simply means that the amount of benefit that comes from a study or research clearly outweighs any adverse risks to the subjects involved in the study or research. A study or research is only considered to be ethical if there is favorable risk benefit ratio (Wikipedia, 2008). Background on the Stanford Prison Experiment The Stanford Prison Experiment was created by Professor Philip Zimbardo who led a team of researchers at Stanford University in 1971. The study was designed to observe and study the human responses to captivity by both the inmates and the authority figures. In order to carry out the experiment, a mock prison was created in...
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...After reading this chapter, which of the many factors that cause prejudice do you think is most important to change? Prejudice is an adverse judgment or opinion formed beforehand or without knowledge or examination of the facts. Prejudice can come from ignorance and also fear, because individuals can be prejudice to a certain culture where they could know a little about them, and is afraid of how that certain culture is different from them in language, behavior or customs. 3- How do Milgram's results—particularly the finding that the remoteness of the victim affected obedience—relate to some aspects of modern warfare? 4- What are some of the similarities between Zimbardo's prison study and the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq? The Abu Ghraib guards clearly wanted less interaction with their prisoners than the Stanford guards wanted with theirs. At Stanford, roll calls initially lasted 10 minutes but grew to...
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...The Morality of Torture The authority of using torture as a punishment in the past has been a cause for conflict. Today, some people see torture as an efficient form of punishment; they believe it is especially necessary in the treatment of terrorist prisoners or prisoners for the purpose of pulling information. Some writers make up fake situations to blow the advantages of torture out of proportion, claiming that it is danger free, low cost and useful for getting fast response. However, after carefully thinking through the arguments used by many torture supporters, one will figure out that the arguments of torture supporters are false. Writers who support torture show less logic, but rather offended anger to evil violence. The use of torture as а form of punishment should be prohibited because contrary to the arguments of torture supporters, it does not serve а purpose, is against international law, and will only perpetuate hatred and retaliation. (Davis) According to, the International Statuette, Torture is any kind of use of force, mental or physical used on a human being to gain third party information or self-confession. No country prefers to use it but is forced to do in order to safeguard the lives of its citizens and smoothen justice. (Greenberg) Most criminal suspects go through some level of torture. Torture may involve Physical methods like starvation, beatings, burning, sodomy as well as psychological methods such as verbal abuse, solitary confinement, and sleep...
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...Zimbardo Research Paper Dr. Zimbardo conducted a research study in 1971 where he took 24 male college students and divided them randomly between guards and prisoners. The guards created a “prison” like set up for their prisoners. The prisoners were arrested by real cops, blindfolded, hand cuffed and taken to the simulation prison where the guards brutalized, dehumanized, tortured them. The study was to see how behaviors change based upon a setting they were put into. Throughout this paper it will come to light on how unethical this study was but also how it changed the ways in which studies are now required to be handled with human participants (Films Media Group, 2012). Value of the Study in Relation to Social Psychology Dr. Zimbardo’s research study was able to show how healthy participants quickly changed their psychological and physical behaviors when they were placed into a prison like environment. The 24 participants were all good people who were put into a very bad situation where they had to choose to stay good or conform with the environment and do what they felt was rational behavior. This study was to last two weeks and after six days Dr. Zimbardo finally shut it down. This is because the prisoners were showing signs of extreme depression and stress anxiety, while the guards were becoming very abusive, hostile and dehumanizing the prisoners. There were only a few people who were able to not let conformity consume who they really were and destroy their...
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...created a great worry among all the citizens and they wanted to do whatever it took to secure the national borders from all terrorism. Stereotypes abounded and many started to wonder about any foreigners, even those that were already in the country. The systematic implementation of torture in the wake of the 9/11/01 attack has become more apparent with the surfacing of documents since the Abu Ghraib scandal broke in April of 2004. The abuse of U.S. prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison was only the first case of 9/11-predicated torture that became widely publicized. In fact the U.S. government is implicated in crimes against detainees in many locations across the world. In 2006 Army and Navy investigators concluded that at least 26 prisoners in custody in Iran and Iraq were likely murdered by their captors, where only one of the deaths was in the Abu Ghraib prison. In 2005 it was reported that 108 U.S. detainees had died in custody, based on information provided by U.S. military officials. The most publicized case of torture at the hands of U.S. officials since 9/11/01 has been the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, in which Iraqi prisoners were reportedly subjected to abuse, torture, sodomy, and homicide by U.S. military personnel. In Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum, the oil giant is accused of being an accomplice to torture, extrajudicial executions and crimes against humanity by the Nigerian government between 1992 and 1995 in the Niger Delta region. Shell is alleged have helped...
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...Use concepts and ideas from the social approach to explain the key issue you have studied (12 marks) The key issue I have studied is the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib. Abu Ghraib is a prison in Iraq and was used by the Iraqi government as a prison for many years. When the Iraqi government was removed from power, the prison was used to hold Iraqi detainees, who were guarded by soldiers from the USA. In April 2004 it was made public knowledge that the detainees were being tortured and dehumanised by the American soldiers. Newspapers were filled with photographs and descriptions of the torture of the Iraqi detainees and there was public disapproval of what was evidently intolerable treatment inflicted on them. One theory that could be used to explain the issue is Milgram’s agency theory of obedience. This theory could be used because the soldiers are trained to be agents of authority and believe they have a duty to protect America as agents of society thus as soldiers, they would be agents obeying the orders rather than autonomous individuals making their own decisions. The soldiers would not have been in an autonomous state, and would have therefore be more able to carry out the orders given to them by an authority figure. This may have been because the soldiers were under the impressions that they would not be held responsible for their actions hence they thought it was acceptable to torture the Iraqi detainees as well as degrading them in the process. ...
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...Standford Prison experiment 1.What are the effects of living in an environment with no clocks, no view of the outside world, and minimal sensory stimulation? * People living in an environment with no clocks, no view of the outside world will change whom the people mentally. It would make the people go crazy. There is no excitement or life in such an environment. People emotions change and are influenced by their environment. 2. Consider the psychological consequences of stripping, delousing, and shaving the heads of prisoners or members of the military. What transformations take place when people go through an experience like this? * I believe that when people go through this experiences they feel less than others. In prison they were treated as dirty people and real prisoners when really wasn’t. 3.At first push-ups were not a very aversive form of punishment, but they became more so as the study wore on. Why the change? * I think it was because the guards wanted to show their supremacy and keep afraid the prisoners by increasing the push-ups. And they also want to be respected by the prisoners and avoid future conflicts with them. 4. How do you think you would have behaved if you were a prisoner in this situation? Would you have rejected these privileges in order to maintain prisoner solidarity? * I think I would take the privileges because it is already a tough life in prison, so why not have the attitude that I should accept what I can get...
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...belief or way of behaving which then becomes widely accepted as the norm, and can be positive or negative. Social influence research tells us how whole societies might change, and is the process of bringing about significant societal changes, which usually results in a conflict with those in authority or power- It could be used to educate others also. Research into obedience had exposed an intellectual illusion that often hinders critical discussion about why people behave inhumanely- the belief that only evil people do evil acts. Research by Milgram and Zimbardo showed that ordinary, decent people who are placed in positions of power, or put under pressure to obey an authority figure, may commit evil acts. Recent events in Iraq (the Abu Ghraib prison incident) has reinforced the fact that we need to be aware of the circumstances which lead to this, to reduce the likelihood of such behaviour. To help in resisting unwanted influences, Zimbardo suggested a ten-step programme; examples of the step include to admit mistakes, to be mindful, to assert your individuality, to not sacrifice freedom for the illusion of security, to oppose unjust systems. If people follow these steps, they will be more likely to become more independent and responsible, and confident in their own mind and beliefs/values. By doing so, they will be more inclined to voice out against an unjust situation, or the social policies of the time, and therefore be able to resist the unwanted influence, perhaps by...
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